


Wednesday

by Jennytheshipper



Category: French cinema, Intimacy (1998), Intimacy (2001), Patrice Chereau, hanif kurieshi
Genre: Adultery, Casual Sex, F/M, First Time Sex, One-Shot, PWP, tfw the filthiest carpet in Londin is actually a turn-on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 22:59:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12220695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennytheshipper/pseuds/Jennytheshipper
Summary: This is how Claire and Jay meet for the first time.





	Wednesday

She should leave. This Nathan is never going to show. He is already a quarter of an hour late. Honestly, she wishes that Betty would only recommend new students that could be arsed to show up. She’d said she’d meet him for coffee, but she hadn’t planned the cafe. She should have planned the cafe. Leave it to Betty to pick this place. It was really a bar, not a proper cafe at all, though the coffee is supposedly good. Not that Claire would know. The barman has been by twice already with his smarmy little “alright love?” and his “are you sure I couldn’t get you a coffee, sweetheart?” She supposes, as she watches him at the controls of the espresso machine, this is how he earns his tips, with his little pleasantries. The barman goes for the stereo, raising the volume yet again. Her head is throbbing. She should just bloody well leave. 

Would it kill him to play something with an actual melody? Some Billy Joel at a low volume would not go amiss. Jazz fusion blares out too loud one moment, going quiet the next. She begins to have hope that it’s actually over before it comes roaring back. The barman is washing glasses in time to it, stacking them quickly in perfect little pyramids. He reminds her of someone, that barman. Someone from way back. Short with a wiry little frame. Not bad looking, but thinning on top. Who was it? Oh yes, that lovely German bloke she’d met on hols in Scotland. Different hair though. The German was blonde. But the same sort of fuzzy shape covering a bald spot. Made her think of Art Garfunkle. God, what she wouldn’t give for some flaming Art Garfunkle she thinks as the jazz fusion enters an unrelenting drum solo. She looks at her watch. She’ll give bloody Nathan another bloody ten minutes then sod him. What was his name, the German bloke? Andre or Adrian? Aidan? Surely not! Too Irish. But there was something about Ireland. Yes. He’d sent a postcard a few weeks later--they’d exchanged addresses, god knows why!--from the Giant’s Causeway. Funny that she remembers the flaming Giant’s Causeway but not the bloke’s name. 

The barman spots her watching him and she looks away, self-consciously, studying the door, commanding it to open, willing the Nathan of her imagination: handsome, young, fit --to walk through it, smile and say, “you must be Claire.” Maybe he’d bend down and kiss her on the cheek. That would be nice. Very sophisticated. She senses the barman approach over her shoulder and braces herself to give another rebuff.

“Expecting someone?” he says, half-shouting above the music. His voice is thin and high-pitched. It finds the base of her skull like an icepick. She stiffens and turns back to him.

“Yeah. Sorry. I would order a coffee or something, but I have this headache.”

He nods. “It’s alright. Seems like your friend lost track of time.”

“He’s not a friend. I’ve never met him, actually. A friend set us up.”

“You’ve been stood up then? Guy’s an idiot. Pretty girl like you,” he says, still half-shouting, with a wink.  


She starts to explain that it’s not like that and then stops. Why explain herself to this little prick? Talking to him will only give him ideas. She digs in her purse, looking for a paracetamol. “Could I trouble you for a glass of water? I’ve got this ruddy headache.”

“Sure,” he says and reaches for a glass, filling it at the fountain without taking his eyes off her. He slides the glass to her. It’s dewy and cool. She picks it up and puts it against her forehead. He winces watching her do this. “Looks bad.”

She digs in her purse again. “Damn. I thought I had some tablets. It’s just the sort of day I’m having.” She takes a long drink of the water, feels a thirst she didn’t know she had, being slaked. She sets the glass back down on the bar.

“Maybe something stronger? On me?”

“No. Thanks. That’s very kind. It’s not that sort of headache.” Mercifully the jazz fusion is finally at an end. There is a blessed pause. A soprano saxophone comes on, softly. No melody but it’s less obnoxious. Almost nice.

“Fair enough.” He says and scans the room, quickly. His voice lowers and he speaks very kindly, and gently, like someone speaking to a child, but without a hint of a patronizing tone. “I know a trick for headaches if you’ll allow me.”

She leans forward, instinctively drawn by his voice, so very quiet and soothing. 

“Give me your hand,” he says mildly, --more request than order. She complies. He takes it in his own, which is warm and soft from washing the glasses in hot water. He turns her hand over and lifts the palm toward his face as if he’s going to tell her fortune. “This won’t hurt. Now just relax. Deep breaths.” He takes hold of her thumb and pinky finger and gently bends them behind her palm, holding them pinned with his left hand. With his right, he begins to rub the palm of her hand, slowly with very firm pressure. Bloody hell he’s strong for a little guy. 

“You can close your eyes if you like. It will help you focus.” She feels her lids close. Her entire body suddenly seems concentrated on the palm of her hand, and every little want she’s ever had seems satisfied by the pressure there. A thirst she didn’t know she had. The saxophone is lost beneath his voice saying, “Deep breaths. Slowly. Just breathe.” 

She says nothing. Drifting. She’s thinking of the German bloke. She’s certain it was Andre. They’d climbed up Ben Something or Other. Done it in a meadow full of heather surrounded by sheep. She remembers his fuzzy head, haloed by the setting sun. What fun she’d had in those days. Before Luke. Before Andy. Before the guilt and the silence and long nights. Just fresh air and fucking and then back to the B&B for a bath and bed--a perfect holiday.

“You can open your eyes now,” the barman says. He lets go of her hand and stands back drying a glass as if nothing ever happened. “How’s your head?”

“Blimey! My head! It _is_ better. Really. It’s completely better. How did you do that?”

“I didn’t do it. You did. You just focused on something else.”

She almost says, “wish I’d known that trick when my son was born,” but she stops herself. She doesn’t want him to know. Five minutes ago she gladly would have played that card, given half a chance. Hell, five minutes ago she’d have given him all the money in her purse, plus her bus card if he would have shut up and left her alone. But now, she doesn’t know why, but she doesn’t want him to know she's married with a kid.

“So what are you doing in this place, with a talent like that?”

“Oh,” he says blushing, “I just work here as a favor to an old friend.”

She finishes her water, looks at her watch. The ten minutes are long past. She should leave. 

“The cure isn’t permanent,” he says. “There’s a danger for a little while. Your headache could come back.”

“Oh? What must I do?”

“Well, I recommend going someplace quiet to sit, out of the light, out of the noise. Somewhere that you can refocus your mind again, should you need to.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know a place like that?” She says it meaning to be sardonic as if such a place couldn’t possibly exist, but she realizes, too late, of course, that it sounds like she is trying to pick him up.

“I do actually. Would you like to go there now?” he says, impishly, looking around.

“Aren’t you working?”

“It’s dead right now. And like I said: I just do this as a favor for a friend.” 

She holds the palm of her hand below the bar where he can’t see it. She puts her thumb in the place where he touched her. She shrugs, trying to act as if this is the kind offer she is used to fielding. “Alright, why not,” she says.

“I’ll just let my friend know. Back in a tick,” he says, disappearing through a doorway marked “private.” She wonders if maybe she should go to the loo, fix her face a bit, put on some lippie. It might help steady her nerves to have something to do with her hands. 

The lights in the loo buzz faintly, and the saxophone sounds tinny and melodramatic in the small, hard room. She digs through her purse, finding a very old lipstick. It clings to her lips, feeling dry and heavy. She scrubs it off with a tissue, leaving her face stained faintly pink around her lips as if she’s been drinking a kiddie’s soda. She looks around for a condom machine but there’s none in the ladies. Must be in the gents. Bloody typical. She heads back to to the bar just as he arrives through the private door, smiling, wearing his coat--a long, military surplus thing like a student would have. He stops in front of her and holds out his elbow and she takes it with a studied nonchalance. As they approach the door, a man comes in: a young, handsome, fit man. She turns her face away from him and buries it in the barman’s wool coat. The barman puts his arm over her shoulder. 

“Was that your friend?” he asks when they are safely out on the pavement.

“I think so.” she says with a smile to herself.

It is sunny and cold, just past midday but already the street signs are casting long shadows. She walks with him for five or six blocks, down the high street, making a sharp turn into a lane of Victorian row homes. To calm herself, she studies the neighborhood: most of the houses are broken up into flats, with two or three mailboxes on every doorstep. Some are boarded up, others just in need of repair. Most of the front gardens are filled with bin bags. There is the occasional student house painted lurid "fun" colors with political signs stuck in the windows. The barman’s house is at the end of the row. 

“Do you share or are you on your own?”

“I share, but the bloke upstairs is never home.” He says, unlocking the door. He holds it open for her, and she steps cautiously into the cold, sunny entry. 

“Through here,” he says and she follows him into a sitting room, ringed with cardboard boxes of books and CDs. A guitar and amplifier lurk in the corner.She hopes very much she isn’t going to be required to listen to him play it. She only just shifted that headache.

“Did you just move house?”

“Something like that,” he says, scrubbing his hand through his hair. There is no furniture except for an armchair, piled with clothes and books, and nearby, an overflowing ashtray.He begins shoving things aside and offers her the chair.  


“No, thanks,” she says. He takes the ashtray out of the room, presumably to empty it. She stands there, her thumb jammed into the palm of her hand, like an actor in a war movie, holding the lever on a grenade after the pin has been pulled. It is quiet, at least, but after all, not that quiet. You can still hear the main road, hear the occasional bus or car horn. It isn’t even all that dim. The sun streams through the window, highlighting the dust motes in the air.

The barman comes back, putting the now-empty ashtray back in its spot on the floor. She removes her coat and he takes it from her, laying it carefully across the chair. He closes the curtains and she squints to adjust to the dim.

She’s never been in this situation before. Not quite like this, anyway. Always before, some pretext of coffee or, in college, of studying. She is used to people--well, Andy anyway, filling in all the awkward silences with talk. Andy has no end of talk. The barman seems to have none. 

They walk toward each other until they are less than an arm’s length apart. He reaches up gently and takes her face in his hands, pulling her into a kiss. He tastes of coffee and cigarettes. He smells of them too, and it reminds her of hols and college and the time before and that is enough. 

She puts her arms around him, feeling his back through his white cotton work shirt. A lovely warmth pours off of him. He breaks the kiss, and she draws him closer and they stand for a moment embracing, her head on his shoulder, letting the heat flow between them. It is almost formal, like children playing grown-ups on stage. She pushes the image from her mind: all those times with Andy, secretly acting out scenes, imagining this bloke or that in the dark. This isn’t a scene. This is real. She must remember that.

His hands leave her face and move down to her waist, over her arse, pulling her up, lifting her whole weight into him. He holds her there, captive for a moment before setting her back on her feet. She doesn’t know quite what to do, where to go. There’s no bed or even a sofa to collapse onto. So she kneels down. She kneels on the floor and begins unbuttoning her blouse. There is nothing seductive about it, nothing stagey. She is simply taking off her top. It happens that there is a man in the room with her. In the theater, she has undressed in front strange men a thousand times. Backstage there is a code. No one lets their eyes rest anywhere too long. Her fingers move quickly, efficiently, with no panic. He follows her lead and smoothes his shirt on the chair with her coat before joining her, squatting on his haunches on the floor. She takes off her bra, methodically. Again, no seduction. He seems preoccupied, anyway, with his trousers, as if he’s taking care not to wrinkle them. He puts them neatly on the chair. He puts the condom on with the same slow deliberate smoothing of his hands as if terrified he will break it. 

He takes a sleeping bag from one of the boxes and unrolls it on the floor. She lies back on it, arching into it a bit, glad to have some protection from the truly filthy carpet. She rolls over onto her side, patting the well-worn softness of the sleeping bag, wondering if this is how he sleeps every night, like a backpacker on permanent holiday or a squatter. She looks up at him, tugs his shoulder, pulling him on top of her. Christ, she’s wet. She only just noticed while taking off her pant the little tide mark that began forming when they left the bar, her arm through his, her head on his shoulder. Jesus. The noises he’s making. He’s literally panting. So is she. He puts two strong fingers inside her briefly. Somehow after the hand-rubbing in the bar, she thought he’d make more of a fuss, but no matter. There’s no need. He’s inside her, rolling her back, lifting her hips, arranging her before he begins in earnest. Such a lot of breathing. It’s all there is. Her mind drifts back to the bar, “slowly. Just breathe.” She tries, but everything is moving too quickly, everything swollen, everything engorged, moving along in its natural course. There’s no way to prolong it, to savor it. There’s a desperate kind of greed between them. Something wonderful that she didn’t know was lurking in her dim corners. A thirst she didn’t know she’d had. 

She looks over his shoulder at the squalor of the room. Rather than shutting it out, she focuses on it. It’s so grimy, so cramped and disgusting. It’s filthy and she doesn’t care. She wants that. Something fast and hard and dirty right there on the floor. He’s fucking her right there on the floor. It’s not a scene. It’s real. She tightens herself around him, angles her hips so that every thrust smashes into her clit. She’s close. She wants to cry out, but that is too much like an actress. She is real. She is here. She is getting fucked very hard on a floor by this barman and his panting breath is over and in her. She comes hard and fast, with no outward indication, save a catch in her already ragged breath. To give him some sign would be communicating too much. It would be acting. The moment passes and she lurches free from it, finding suddenly that the greed is gone and wanting nothing more than dim and quiet and warmth. She spreads herself wider for him, tipping him in deeper, making herself soft and pliant. He looks so desperate, still in the clutches of the greed. It isn’t long before his breathing becomes half-words and half-moans followed by a final shudder. He collapses, breathless, onto her and that is the warmth that she wants. With one hand, he slips off the condom and tosses it into the ashtray with a splat.

They fall asleep like that, his head on her breast, his warm flesh curled around her and they sweat themselves together into one thing. 

She wakes with a start, pulls herself free, almost painfully. There’s a stickiness, a peeling off, that she manages as gently as she can, trying not to wake him. She’s half dressed before he comes to, rolls over and looks up at her as she’s putting on her coat. 

“Will I see you again?” he asks and she realizes it’s the first time he’s spoken since they came into the house.

“If you like. This time works for me. Can we meet next week, Wednesday? Here?”

He stammers, “yes,” and she turns and is out the door, shutting it with a firm click behind her. She walks fast down the pavement in the gathering dusk. The streetlights flicker on. She boards her bus, telling herself that she must get into character: She met a student for coffee. It was tedious. She has a headache. She holds her head in her hands, looks at her practiced, pained reflection in the bus window. She’s nearly home. Home to Luke. Home to Andy. Her thumb is shoved hard into the palm of her hand. She closes her eyes. Refocuses her mind. She can taste him. Smell him. Hear his breath. Feel her stomach dropping like a fast elevator ride in a tall building. Enough, now. Enough. Only two stops to go. Then one. Almost home. Enough, till Wednesday.

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of my favorite Mark Rylance films and I wanted to fill in the blanks a little, to see how Claire and Jay met. I also wanted to show why Claire goes with Jay in the first place and why she keeps coming back, Wednesday after Wednesday.


End file.
